My wife and I think Lilo may have picked up some fleas. She sleeps on the bed with us, and last week I had about 10+ bites all over my back. We just noticed today Lilo has some bumps on her skin. We picked up one of those flea combs, and brushed her pretty thoroughly. Didn't really see any fleas, but some of the brown flakes that were mentioned in some flea articles I read. We just gave her a thorough bath tonight, and washed all the sheets.

After doing some searching around online, I was not surprised to find out that the run of the mill treatments are not very healthy or safe for dogs. These were pretty informative links:

We made an appointment with the vet just to be safe. I'm still looking into possible treatments if the problem continues. Some of the natural lemon dip treatments sound interesting, but I'm not sure how effective they are.

If you guys have any experience with fleas, could you please let us know ?

I used to have a subscription to Whole Dog Journal (a great natural dog care and training magazine). They ran a couple articles on fleas and dealing with them in a less toxic way than the usual pesticides and drugs.

You have to pay to get copies of the journal, but I could photo copy those articles and mail them to you if you like.

I was talking to a co-worker today that has a vet in the family. He said that they have had a lot of success with a product called "Frontline". I have been reading about the active chemical "fipronil", and it sounds like it is somewhat toxic, but only if ingested. If anyone has any experience with this product, please let me know.

Fleas seem to be such a nuisance. I'd like to take the all natural path, but from what I have been reading, fleas seem to be extremely persistant, and can survive just about about anything. I would hate to drag this out longer than necessary for Lilo's sake. She has bites all over her body.

I keep my dogs on K9Advantix which is by Bayer(same company that makes Advantage). Living in Florida, we are under constant assault by fleas, ticks, and mosquitoes. The K9Advantix formula goes on the skin behind the shoulders and protects them for a month from reinfestation by fleas and ticks, or mosquito bites. Advantage only protects against fleas, and Frontline protects against fleas and ticks.

I have used all three products on differing occasions and none of these resulted in any side effects or irritation for my animals. If I've been slack and forget to give them their dose at the beginning of the month, they get fleas. But after noticing and applying the Advantage/Frontline/K9Advantix the infestation disappears within a day or two.

I would recommend any of these products , depending on what parasites are common in your area. Even though the K9Advantix is more expensive, I take my dogs running in the woods and there are fleas, ticks, and an entire air force of mosquitoes waiting for us, so I keep them on that and they are happy and itch-free. You can get these through your vet. I hope this helps!

Good advise. Working in veterinary offices has afforded me the opportunity to use all of the above described products on my animals. None of my animals have ever had any adverse side affects (short of drooling if they tast it. Yucky stuff, I know from personal experience but that's another story). All are liquid products applied to the skin in the same manner. They have different ingredients and kill different pests. On a super rare occasion I have seen or heard of a client's animal having a small reaction. Usually they report that the animal "weirds out" a little after having it applied to the skin. When Frontline first came out years ago I saw several dogs with rashes at the application site, but not since then. There's nothing wrong with going all natural, but my recomendation would be to use Advantage, Frontline, or Advantix at least once to knock out the existing fleas before they get out of hand. There is also a product called Capstar that comes in a pill form for killing fleas. Only drawback to Capstar, is that it only kills what is on the dog at that time and does nothing for your environment.

I started Lilo on Frontline this past weekend, and took her to the vet to be safe. Turns out she has a bacterial skin infection. They said it could be a result of the fleas, or maybe something else. I had a bunch of bites on my back a few weeks ago that I thought were from fleas, so I'm not sure. They gave us some antibiotics for Lilo that she's been taking for the past couple of days. I think she is starting to feel better already. She seems to not be as itchy as she was before.